Dogwood Bloom and Leaves. Yosemite Valley, California. May 7. 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
An early dogwood blossom and leaves in Yosemite Valley, California.
This is another plant that I’m on a first name basis with. I know this particular dogwood rather well, having first been attracted to it one fall while walking along the north side of Yosemite Valley looking for leaves against rock. At that time the fall-color leaves of this dogwood tree were draped across the top of a low, flat boulder. When I’m in this part of the Valley, I often walk past this tree to see what it is doing. On this first weekend of May, the tree was just getting its first blossoms of the spring season, and I was able to clamber up on top of the boulder, set up my tripod, and make a few close-up photographs of the flowers.
I originally figured it would be a color photograph but as I worked on it I started to think it might be interesting in black and white, too. (You’ll get to decide – the color version will appear tomorrow.) Besides having to wait for the slight breeze to pause so that I could make a 1/8 second exposure, another challenge was the dynamic range between the bloom and the rather dark background. I tend to slightly underexpose the highlights, since digital capture is not kind to over-exposed whites. Then I work in post to bright the brightest parts back up to where I think they should be, but without letting anything blow out.
For dogwood fans, the “word on the street” had been that these flowers were coming along a bit later than usual this year. But on this day it seemed like they were suddenly starting to appear in many of the usual places in the Valley. I’m expecting them to peak between now and perhaps a week or so from now, and later on at higher elevations. One potential wrinkle is the possibility of snow in the Valley on Sunday!
Update: There is also a color version of this photograph.
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Dan,
I was wondering if you could comment on your black and white conversions? I assume these are shot in color and converted in post? You always seem to nail it and I find myself struggling despite hours of experimentation.
Cheers,
Gabriel
Gabriel:
Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. I would have replied earlier to your question about black and white conversions, except that the answer could easily be rather long! After waiting for more than a day, I think I have decided to offer a short reply here and to then post something more substantial at some point in the future.
As a Photoshop user, I most often use the black and white layer to do my conversions. I find that it is generally a good starting point. I may select one or the other of the filter options from the CS5 black and white conversion layer, probably most often using red, yellow, or green filters when I do apply filtering. On relatively rare occasions I might use blue and very rarely the (simulated) IR filter.
This conversion often gets me “in the ball park,” but still requires a bit of work. At a minimum I’ll use at least one curve layer to set black point and white point and usually to modify the luminance curve a bit too. Some of the variations that I may use include selective applying different curves to different masked areas of the images or even occasionally doing separate black and white conversion on different portions of the image and applying different filters to each. Some dodging and burning is often needed as well.
And yes, since I shoot digital, every photograph begins as a color capture. Sometimes I know more or less for sure that I’ll end up in black and white at the time I expose. Other times I am not certain but I have an idea that I’d like to try black and white. In still other circumstances I may only discover that monochrome will be the best option when working in post. In essence, I suppose that I’m simply delaying the decision until I get into post, which is now a viable option with cameras that can capture in different ways without need to worry about changing film!
Hope that gives you at least a very general idea of what I do, but feel free to ask my specific questions.
Dan
Dan,
Thanks for the super helpful response. I look forward to a more in depth review of your work flow!
cheers,
Gabriel
Does it count if I’m a dog lover and was attracted to the title? Nice work on black and white!
Ha! I don’t care how you landed here, just that you did! ;-)
Da
Thanks!
Dan
Thanks, all. I’m especially happy if it works for someone like David who isn’t by nature a big fan of flower images! :-)
Dan
My father loved to photograph flowers, but I’ve never been that into flower images. I definitely like this one though. I like how you isolated the elements, how the flowers and leaves are suspended in black space. Makes for something unusual.
Great shot! I think black and white was the right decision.
Thanks, Pat! I think you’ll be just in time for lots of great dogwood (and other) opportunities. But do keep an eye on the weather – it seems to be veering back in a winterish direction right now.
Dan
This is a beautiful shot, Dan, and I think the b&w is really powerful for it. I’ll be heading up to Yosemite next week for a few days, and am excited to be hearing that the dogwoods should be at/near peak bloom!